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TECHNIQUE for writing a play
DIFFICULT TO DEFINE-RULE ONE KNOWLEDGE OF THE THEATER-RULE TWO: THE PLOTPRELIMINARY MENTAL PROCESS-SCENARIO-UNITY OF THE PLOT-THE REASONS-SCOPE OF THEATRICAL PRESENTATION-ICONOCLASTIC INCLINATION-READING THE PLAY TO FRIENDSSTORY TOLD BY MEANS OF PLAYERS AND STAGE-SETTING-STAGE-TRICKSTECHNICAL PERFECTION-GOOD SENSE Difficult to define. The technique of an art which differs so widely in treatment and expression under the hands of its various exponents is difficult to define. Any instructions on play-building must necessarily contain a number of rules of what notto do, though some writers on the subject feel such negative instruction hardly worthwhile. Rules of any kind fall into their proper place when one has mastered an art; for the novice, obedience to rules is a help and a safeguard. Rule one. Knowledge of the theater. Before starting to write your play, inform yourself on all those matters included in the theater, some of which. Ihave already mentioned. This might be called Rule One. Henry Arthur Jones said in an interview, when asked why so few tyros proved themselves worthy of the managerial welcome: "Because they are so ignorant of the task they impose upon themselves. Dramatic writing is more beset with difficulties than is any other form of authorship imaginable. Nevertheless, the amateur rushes boldly in and storms the managerial office, before he has mastered the very rudiments of his craft. Nobody starts to build a house without a course of previous training, yet hundreds of people start to write plays with no better acquaintance with the details of playconstruction than a man might gain of house-construction in a few casual glances at the outside of one. " Lewis Waller, the well-known English actor, adds to this: "There is a technique of the theater, a technique of play-writing and acting that can only be acquired by laborious experience. " If you can write plays, if you are really an embryo dramatist, you will not write just the one play which has set you searching books, and rules, and theaters, but another, and another, until you know your work. I will add one more quotation at this point, because it comes from a woman who conducts one of the largest play-bureaus in America, and who in her reading of thousands of MSS. from almost every city, town, and village in the country is peculiarly fitted to judge how much both the preceding quotations are needed, and how little they are heeded. Elizabeth Marbury says : "Lack of technique is the difficulty with many of the American playwrights. It is not that they cannot master it, but either they think they have it as a gift needing no cultivation, or that it is not worthwhile. " A definition. Technique, in the dictionary, is described as the manner of artistic performance. For instance, in piano playing, technique includes the ability to rapidly transfer, through the eyes, brain, and fingers, the notes of the musical composition to the keyboard : the knowledge of the correct position of the hands, the skill of the finger movements, the complete acquaintance with every sign and symbol of expression marked in the score. All of this is purely mechanical and is acquired as the result of hour upon hour of actual labor. Not one of these matters is ignored by a Paderewski or a Carreno, any more than by the plodding student. The difference in the resulting performance is dependent on three things—work, temperament, and individuality. The technique of play-writing is not so literally set down. Except for the medium, there is no definite standard. Yet, as in music, we have the ability to transcribe the life we see and know into the life we put on the stage, the knowledge of the correct way of going to work, the skill with which the work is done, the acquaintance with all the signs and mechanics of the theater. A dangerous half-truth. Certain playwrights who have in a manner "arrived " will airily affirm: "Have a good story, a good plot, and technique will take care of itself. " It is a careless and dangerous saying to present to the laity because only half a truth. It is like saying:Speak the language, and rules of grammar will take care of themselves. Of course they will, once they have become a part of one's subconscious processes. Writers who make such careless statements forget the period in which they learned or unconsciously absorbed the rules. Perhaps a large part of the technique of the theater is a technique which its most successful exponents have taken in so unconsciously and gradually as hardly to realize there is such a thing. But this can be true only of those writers who in some way or other know the theater. When a playwright makes both statements—that technique takes care of itself, and a knowledge of the theater is unnecessary, as one playwright did not long ago—he confesses himself one who is unconscious of how much of this knowledge he actually possesses, because he has never tried to give it a name, and because he learned it all without knowing he had done so. The trouble with the writers who make this statement seems to be that they use the word technique as if it meant a formula or a recipe. A formula no more makes a playwright than a cook-book creates a chef. Rule two. The story. In the chapters relating to the story, we had something to say of the ability to transfer the lives around us to the stage. Therefore, this would be the next rule or requisite: have your story clear in your mind before you start to work. Mr. Archer says there are no rules for writing a play ; in a strict sense this is true. Yet, as you see, rules of a kind there are, which are part of this matter of technique. Two have already been formulated, the second of which is : have a definite tale to tell. You cannot start a play without, though some people try. Preliminary thinking. In a recent symposium held in a leading New York paper, nine well-known dramatists gave their methods of procedure. These varied with the individuality and temperament of the writers. But on one point they were all agreed: the importance of the clearness of the plot or story before beginning the actual work of writing the play. In some cases this was allowed to roll around in the brain for a year before any writing was done, beyond, perhaps, the entries made in some notebook to help the memory until the entire matter was formulated. Sometimes a certain character suggested the story in which he was to move ; at others, the story brought a troop of characters marching and counter-marching, some to stay and grow, others to fade out and be rejected. But this preliminary mental process seemed to preface the work of all of them. This method, however, is not so easy to the unpracticed novice. All these writers were trained byexperience, and able to hold a story in mind, to digest it, as it were, and then start to work with a fairly clear idea of the resulting scenario. One writer of the nine went so far as to absolutely repudiate a written scenario. But he has the gift of being able to hold his mental story very clearly: "Before I actually begin to write a play my characters are so real to me that I know what they look like, what their voices sound like, what sort of clothes they wear, where they stand or sit as they say or do what I make them say or do. " Scenario. It is to help the novice make his story real, his characters alive, that I have suggested the writing of the episode as a story in prose. Sometimes one is unaware how slim a narrative he is preparing to dramatize until he presents it to himself in this way. The story of a very poor four-act drama read in manuscript was briefly summarized by the critic thus : a clergyman was in love with a married woman, though he had never told her and she did not suspect. Before the end of the first act, the husband was killed in an accident, off-stage. She promised to marry the clergyman in Act Four. That was all. There were no obstacles, no complications, no plot; certainly, there was no theme. Had the writer put it all down on paper, he could not have helped but note the futility of his story. That the original situation held possibilities of drama he either had not noticed or had ignored, as was shown by his so early and easily putting the husband out of the way. Unity of plot: rule three. The next feature of play-technique is the " one-ness, " the unity, of the plot. Unity of time and place are frequently set aside; the unity of action, the singleness of episode is steadily growing more and more of an exaction. In a modern drama, every character, every situation and complication, every line of the dialogue must deal with this one plot. There are no cunning little by-paths leading nowhere. All must lead up to that final curtain by gradual, inevitable degrees— a succession of dramatic actions or incidents moving definitely forward to the climax. Reasons. There must be a reason for every person, line, and situation in your play ; this point cannot be too much emphasized. Remembering it will stop you when you are inclined to permit your characters to do unnecessary things. Suppose, for example, you want to get a certain character off the stage so that certain other characters may be in a position for a scene which the first person must not hear. He must havea reason for leaving which will be apparent or obvious to the audience ; he cannot wander aimlessly out. He does not necessarily have to say anything in explanation ; he may be just a servant goingabout his duties, or a guest following others to another room to smoke, or play cards, or speak to someone: anything, so long as there is a legitimate reason, spoken or implied, for him to exit. From ancient Greece comes down the dictum, which good taste has seen no reason to change. It is strikingly true of play-writing to-day. Thus Aristotle: "The fable, since it is an imitation action, should be the imitation of one action, and of the whole of this, and that the parts of the transactions should be so arranged that anyone of them being transposed or taken away, the whole would become different and changed. For that which when present or not present produces no sensible difference is not a part of the fabric. " Scope of theatrical presentation. You must keep your actions—the crimes, or accidents, or happenings—within the scope of theatrical presentation. Percy Mackaye speaks of this as writing a practical play : i. e. , "A play likely to be produced. " Wonderful things are done in stagecraft in these days of mechanical device, but it is as well for the novice to wait for some experience in his art before writing a play which would practically require the reconstruction of all that part of the house back of the curtain. It takes skill to put unusual situations into their proper place in a play. The manager always feels he is taking a chance with the unknown writer; if to this chance be added unnecessary expense for unusual scenic contrivances, he is not exactly to be blamed for refusing to take the risk. Iconoclastic inclination. To have daring ideas, iconoclastic inclination, may make for striking originality, but go slowly until you have mastered something of your medium. The two Richards—Wagner and Strauss—invented new instruments for new tones, but they thoroughly understood the old ones. You may become great enough to smash old methods, but you must first pass through the school. Wagner wrote Rienzi, on old accepted lines, long before, in Pareifal, he brought the leit-motif to perfection. The great sometimes disregard technique, in all the arts. It is not well, in writing for the theater, to go too far in this iconoclasm, else you will find yourself at odds with all the paraphernalia included within the theater's four walls. As artist, architect, and sculptor passed through the schools of art to acquire the knowledge necessary for the use of their tools, so must musician, actor, and playwright pass through the schools of practice and experience before using their tools. You say, very properly, that the fact of your situation being unusual should be in its favor, since I have already advocated novelty. I am merely advising letting such situations alone until you are sure that you—and the stage-director--can handle them. Write your play, not once, but dozens of times, if need be. Put it away for a while ; give yourself time to forget it a little, then go at it again. Artists in painting and illustrating know the value of this method. Mistakes you had not noticed, or had glossed over in the fever of writing, will shriek at you from the pages. Reading the play to friends. Another word of warning might just as well find its place here, since the practice actually retards the grasp of technique and delays the day of real accomplishment. Do not be in haste to read your play to friends and admirers the moment you have written the final words of your last scene in your first transcript. Better read it to an enemy : you will be more likely to get criticism worthwhile. If you are so fortunate as to number among your friends someone connected with the theater who is honest enough to tell you the truth, as he sees it, you will be really helped, even if the remarks are caustic. I know of nothing more pernicious in its effect on the amateur writer than the habit, so prevalent, of reading a first play to an invited group of non-theatrical, nonliterary friends. A practiced writer may receive valuable criticism from an "outsider, " though the latter's remarks are delivered without consciousness of the train of thought they may evoke in the author. And sometimes after an amateur has had expert opinion, a remark from someone else may chance to be of value. But no amateur ever received valuable orpractical criticism from such an audience as I havedescribed—chiefly for the reason that it takes certain faculties to listen to a play intelligently. If one lacks, for instance, the power of " staging " or picturing a play in action as he listens to the reading of it in a drawing-room, your effort is wasted. And this picture-making faculty is not given to everyone. How the story is told: rule four. Another sign of an expert in technique is the ability with which he causes his story to be simply and clearly told by the players and the stage-setting, without one unnecessary word or obtrusion from the author. Wherever we are mane to feel that the writer is himself speaking, it is because of faulty construction. The illusion that the actors are in truth the characters they aim to portray and that these characters alone are speaking, must be held in the minds of the audience. If it is not, it may be the actor's fault ; it should never be the author's. There is but one way in which the dramatist can identify himself with the play: he can make one of his characters a photographic representation of himself. Otherwise if a character stops being John Smith for a few moments so that the author may launch some views which may have to do with the play, but which have no real relation to John Smith, it is bad characterdrawing if it is nothing else. Bernard Shaw stops the entire action of Fanny's First Play to let a French officer deliver a lengthy speech about Englishwomen. But, with Shaw's plays, it so happens that his admirers are more interested in him than in any of his characters, so perhaps he may be pardoned the transgression. Stage-tricks. We often speak of stage-tricks. Perhaps mention of these is out of place in a book intended for novices, for the simple reason that it takes an experienced craftsman to make use of a trick in writing or stage-direction. In the hands of the beginner the usage is apt to stand out glaringly from the rest of the drama. As a warning, however, the mention is not inept. There are many such tricks ; they are only obvious as " tricks " when they are unnatural, plainly theatrical. A clever stagetrick, utilized naturally and properly, has its dramatic uses. Tricks of other days have been steadily and gradually forced out of the drama because they have been caused generally by the intrusions of the author in prologues, epilogues, and other explanatory matter. The monologue is an old theatrical trick discarded because of its unnaturalness. A clever, legitimate trick, which told without words and in the briefest space of time something the dramatist wished us to known at once, was shown in the first act finale of Phroso, dramatized from the Anthony Hope novel. Lord Wheatley has had a short scene with his fiancee, with whom he has imagined himself very much in love. She has given him a rose, which he puts in his coat. Later he has a scene with the tempestuous Greek beauty, the Lady Euphrosyne, who stabs his hand with her dagger. At the end of the act, as the Greek is passingacross a gallery at the back of the stage, Lord Wheatley takes the rose from his coat and half unconsciously smells it. Euphrosyne, or Phroso, turns suddenly and leans over the gallery to say softly, "My lord, I am—sorry—for that, " pointing to his wounded hand. His back is to the audience, his arm has dropped to his side at her first words, the rose dangling from his fingers. As Phroso finishes her speech and turns, passing along the gallery to her room, Lord Wheatley, with lifted head, follows her movement, still standing in the same position. There is no sign of any emotion on the part of either player; but—the forgotten rose falls slowly from his fingers to the stage, as the curtain descends. That is all. Could a long, rapturous speech on his part have told' us any more, or with half the effect? Said Mr. Brookfield : "No one can afford to dispense with the tricks of the trade. ' But the artist must learn to practice them so skillfully that the audience are beguiled into think ing their eiects are produced by entirely new and original means. " Technical perfection. With all that has been said both here and elsewhere about technique in playwriting, remember always that mere technical perfection in any art is empty. The great teachers of music and painting have sometimes been inferior performers. A play but up of theatrical traditions, stage-tricks, and dramatic formalism will not be a great play. But the writing of such a play by the student should be a help to him in learning something of the work before him. Do not be afraid of technique as something either too difficult to grasp or too hampering on originality. Master it—do not let it master you. Good sense. Though the following is written of prose composition, it is so plainly pertinent to the subject under discussion that it makes a most fitting close to this matter of technique: "No principle of composition is anywhere absolute; . . . the finest art is imperceptible. . . . Principle is not rule ; it is a guide, not a master. To neglect it is to go astray ; to follow it blindly is to know not where you are. Above all principle, above all else, the deepest secret of all fine art is fine good sense. " English Composition, Barrett Wendell. category:Writing techniques